I Caught My Reflection in a Bakery Window Last March and Didn't Recognize the Way I Was Standing.
I want to share what I've been doing the last few months, because my sister asked me about it on the phone last week and I realized I'd never said it out loud to anyone.
I'm 62.
I went through menopause at 51.
The hot flashes faded after a couple of years. The sleep got mostly normal again.
For about seven or eight years after that, I thought I'd come out the other side.
I was teaching full-time then. Elementary school. Third grade, mostly. The kind of work that doesn't let you sit down for long stretches and doesn't let you be tired in front of the kids.
I retired at 60.
I picked up a few hours a week tutoring kids in reading. It keeps me in the work without the exhaustion of a full classroom.
My husband Steve and I have been married 38 years. Two grown kids. Three grandchildren — six, four, and almost two.
That's the bio.
That's not really what I came to tell you.
What I came to tell you started somewhere around my fifty-eighth birthday.
It wasn't anything dramatic.
It was a slow drift.
I started getting cold in rooms other people weren't cold in.
I started reading two fewer pages of my novel before falling asleep at night.
I started suggesting we take the elevator at the movie theater instead of the stairs to the upper level — the same stairs I'd taken without thinking about for thirty years.
I started telling my daughter, when she asked me to come along to the playground with the grandkids, that maybe next time.
It was small.
It was so small I didn't really see it as a pattern.
I just thought: I'm 58, then I'm 59, then I'm 60, and this is what those numbers feel like.
Last March I was downtown picking up a birthday cake for my husband.
It was a Tuesday morning, gray and cold. The kind of late-winter day when the sidewalk is still salt-stained from the last snow.
I walked from where I'd parked to the bakery — three blocks. It used to be a quick walk for me. That morning it felt like work.
The bakery is in an old brick building with a big plate-glass window facing the street.
I stopped in front of it to read the menu.
And I caught my own reflection in the glass.
For about three seconds I didn't recognize the woman I was looking at.
She was leaning forward a little at the shoulders.
Her hand was on the door handle the way you'd put your hand on a railing — to steady yourself, not to open something.
Her chin was tucked down toward her collarbone.
She looked tired in a way I hadn't realized I'd started to look.
I stood there in front of that bakery window for what felt like a long minute.
I straightened up.
I rolled my shoulders back.
I lifted my chin.
I looked at the reflection again.
That was the woman I was used to seeing.
The one I'd just been looking at — the woman who'd been standing on that sidewalk three seconds earlier — was someone else.
Someone who had been quietly taking over the way I held my body and I hadn't noticed.
I bought the birthday cake.
I drove home.
I didn't tell Steve about the bakery window.
I sat with it for a few days.
I started paying attention.
I noticed I was bracing the kitchen counter with one hand when I bent to get a pan out of the lower cabinet.
I noticed I was sitting down on the bench in our front hall to put my boots on instead of leaning against the wall the way I had for thirty years.
I noticed I was asking Steve to bring the groceries in from the car.
I noticed I'd stopped pushing the grandkids on the backyard swing because the standing-and-pushing made my legs ache.
None of it was a problem.
All of it was something.
I went to my doctor.
Dr. Okafor has been my doctor for about nine years. She's a careful, unhurried woman. She listens.
I told her the bakery window story.
I told her about the bracing and the bench and the swing.
I told her I wasn't depressed. I wasn't unhappy. I wasn't dealing with anything in particular.
I was just slower and quieter than I used to be, and I'd seen myself standing differently in a bakery window and it had unsettled me.
She listened the whole way through.
She ran a comprehensive workup — full lipid panel, thyroid, vitamin D, B12, iron, blood sugar, cardiac markers.
A week later she called me herself.
She said: "Your bloodwork is fine. Vitamin D is on the low end of normal. Everything else is right where I'd want it for a woman your age."
Then she said something I've been thinking about ever since.
She said: "Linda, a lot of what you're describing is what we see in women who are ten or twelve years post-menopause. The estrogen that supported your cardiovascular system for decades has been gone for a while now, and the body has been adjusting to that. For some women that adjustment is smooth. For others it's a stretch of years where they feel slower and quieter and colder than they used to. It's not a disease. It's not a deficiency. It's a chapter of the body's life that doesn't have a single prescription answer."
She talked about the foundation.
Movement — keep walking, add a little resistance work if I could.
Sleep — protect it.
Sunlight when I could get it.
Social connection.
A thoughtful approach to what I was putting in my body — more vegetables, more antioxidant-rich food, plenty of water.
She said: "If you want to add one thoughtful thing supplementally, I won't argue with it. Just call the office first so we can check for interactions. And don't expect a switch to flip. Expect a foundation to slowly hold you a little better."
I thanked her.
I drove home thinking about the word foundation.
I'm not someone who jumps into supplements.
I've watched my sister buy a bag full of pills from every health-food store she's ever walked into, and a month later they're under her bathroom sink and she's onto the next thing.
I wanted to add one thing. One thoughtful thing.
I sat with it for a few weeks.
I did some reading.
About a month after the bakery window, I went to breakfast with my friend Constance at the diner we've been meeting at every other Saturday for almost twenty years.
I told her about the bakery window. About the bracing. About the swing.
She listened the way Constance listens, which is over a cup of coffee with both hands wrapped around the mug.
When I was done she set her coffee down.
She said: "I want to tell you something, but I want you to know I'm not selling anything and I'm not promising anything."
I said okay.
She said her sister-in-law — a woman in her late sixties who'd been through a similar stretch of years — had added a beetroot supplement to her morning about a year ago with her doctor's approval.
Constance's sister-in-law said it was part of what had helped her come back to herself.
Not the whole thing. Part of it.
Constance said the brand was something called Rosabella. A small farming community out in Lancaster County.
She said she wasn't telling me to try it.
She was telling me it was a thing her sister-in-law had done and felt good about, and she thought of me when I described the bakery window.
I asked her to text me the name.
She did.
I went home that afternoon and did some reading.
What I learned was that beetroot has been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness and for supporting the body's antioxidant systems.
The active compound is something called betalains — that deep crimson red pigment that stains your cutting board when you slice a beet.
Betalains are one of the more potent antioxidants in the food supply, and they have a particular affinity for the cardiovascular system.
They support the body's natural antioxidant balance.
They support healthy circulation.
They're part of the family of plant compounds researchers have been studying for their role in supporting cardiovascular wellness during the years after menopause, when the body's natural support systems shift.
Beetroot is a structure-function ingredient, not a medication.
It supports healthy cholesterol levels already within the normal range.
It supports healthy circulation.
It doesn't replace anything else you're doing — it works alongside it.
That last part is what made me comfortable.
I wasn't going to replace anything Dr. Okafor had recommended. I was going to add one thing to what I was already doing.
Before I ordered, I called Dr. Okafor's office.
I told the nurse what I was thinking. Told her the brand. Told her the dose on the bottle. Told her the only thing I take is a daily multivitamin and a low-dose vitamin D capsule.
She talked to Dr. Okafor and called me back the next day.
She said it was a sensible thing to add. No interactions to worry about. Have me mention it at my next visit.
I ordered the bottle.
When it arrived, I noticed the color of the capsules before anything else.
A deep, almost-purple red.
The reading I'd done explained why — Rosabella cold-presses their beets at low temperatures, which takes longer but preserves more of the betalains.
That deep color is the visible marker of the active compound being intact.
I set the bottle on my kitchen counter next to the coffeemaker.
The next morning I put one capsule on the saucer next to my mug and took it with my first sip.
I'm not going to tell you something happened in seventeen minutes.
I don't think these things work like a switch flipping.
What I will tell you is what I noticed over the next couple of months.
The first thing was small.
I caught myself, about three weeks in, carrying both bags of groceries into the house from the car in one trip instead of two.
I didn't decide to do it. I just did it. I was already standing on the porch with both bags before I realized I hadn't asked Steve to come help.
The second thing was the bench in our front hall.
I started putting my boots on standing up again. Leaning against the wall, the way I used to.
I didn't realize I'd stopped using the bench until I stopped using it.
The third thing was the swing.
I was at my daughter's house in June for a Sunday afternoon and my six-year-old grandson asked me to push him on the swing.
I pushed him for almost ten minutes.
My legs didn't ache.
I came inside and sat at my daughter's kitchen island and drank a glass of water and felt the kind of pleasant tiredness you feel when you've done something physical instead of the kind of bone-deep tiredness I'd gotten used to.
About four months in, I caught my reflection in a different window.
This one was the window of a flower shop on the same downtown street as the bakery.
I was walking past it on a Saturday morning to pick up something for Steve.
I stopped in front of the glass.
I looked at the woman in the reflection.
Her shoulders were back. Her chin was up. Her hand wasn't on a railing.
She looked like me.
I stood there for a second and I'll tell you the truth — my eyes filled up.
I'd thought the woman I'd seen in the bakery window in March was the woman I was now.
She wasn't.
She'd been a woman who'd been quietly slipping for a few years and I'd let her, and I'd assumed she was the new normal.
She wasn't the new normal.
She was the bottom of a stretch I'd been in.
I walked into the flower shop and bought a small bunch of tulips and walked back to my car and drove home and didn't say anything to Steve about it.
Some things you keep for yourself for a while before you say them out loud.
At my next appointment with Dr. Okafor, my bloodwork was the same as it had been in March.
Good.
Where she wanted it.
She didn't change anything.
She didn't put me on a prescription.
She asked me how I'd been feeling.
I told her.
The groceries. The boots. The swing. The flower shop window.
I mentioned the beetroot. Same brand, same dose, every morning.
She nodded.
She said it sounded like a reasonable addition and she was glad I'd called the office before I started it.
She said: "Linda, whatever combination of things you've been doing — the walking, the supplement, paying closer attention to your sleep and your water and your vegetables — keep doing it. The foundation is holding you."
That was about two months ago.
I want to be careful about what I'm claiming.
I don't know how much of my coming back is the beetroot.
I don't know how much is the resistance work I started doing with two-pound dumbbells in my living room a few times a week.
I don't know how much is the better attention I started paying to my water and my vegetables.
I don't know how much is the fact that I finally told my doctor the truth about how I'd been feeling and stopped pretending it was nothing.
It's probably all of it together.
Bodies are different and lives are different and I can't tell you that what worked for me would work for anyone else.
What I can tell you is what I did.
I stopped explaining away what I was noticing about myself.
I told my doctor.
I let her run the bloodwork to rule out anything specific.
I listened when she said the answer wasn't a prescription but a foundation.
I added the things she asked me to add — sleep, movement, water, vegetables, one thoughtful supplemental thing.
I called the office before I added the supplement.
I waited for the doctor's approval.
I added the supplement to what I was already doing — not in place of anything.
If you've been in a similar stretch — you're a decade or so past menopause, your numbers are fine, your doctor is happy with you, and yet you've been slowly getting colder and quieter and more tired than you used to be — it might be worth a conversation.
Not a prescription conversation.
A foundation conversation.
What are you protecting in your sleep? What movement are you doing? What are you putting in your body? Is there one thoughtful thing you'd want to add, with your doctor's input?
That conversation is what got me here.
Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before adding any new supplement, especially if you're on medication for blood pressure or cardiovascular health.
That one phone call is what made me comfortable starting, and it's what I'd tell anyone else to do first.
The brand I used is Rosabella.
1,300 milligrams per capsule, cold-pressed at low temperatures, grown in Lancaster County.
One capsule with a glass of water in the morning.
That's the whole thing.
P.S. Constance and I had breakfast at the diner two weekends ago. I told her about the flower shop window. She didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then she said: "I'm glad. I wasn't sure if I should have told you about it at all that morning. I didn't want to push." I told her she hadn't pushed. She'd offered. There's a difference. The women I trust most in my life are the ones who know the difference.
P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. I think that's a sensible policy for a supplement — it gives you time to actually see whether it does anything for you. I'd give it a few weeks at minimum. Bodies are different. Some people notice something within the first week or two. Others take longer.
P.P.P.S. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case. They're a small operation and the harvest is once a year, so the bottling can run on its own schedule.
P.P.P.P.S. Here's what I'd tell you to do. Call your doctor's office first. Tell them exactly what you're thinking and exactly what you're on. Wait for the callback. If the doctor approves, put one capsule on the saucer next to your morning coffee mug. Don't change anything else without your doctor's input. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. And in the meantime — protect your sleep. Drink your water. Walk. Lift something heavier than your coffee cup a few times a week. Stand up straight when you catch yourself in a window. The bottle isn't the whole foundation. It's one piece of it.
P.P.P.P.P.S. My daughter had us over for dinner last Sunday. After we ate I went out to the backyard with my grandson and we kicked a soccer ball around for about twenty minutes. I was the goalie. He scored on me probably fifteen times. I was sweating and laughing and my hair was a mess. My daughter came to the back door at one point and watched us. When I came inside she didn't say anything. She just hugged me longer than usual. There are moments where the people who love you tell you they've noticed the difference without using any words. That was one of them.
https://track.tryrosabella.com/feb71eaf-4594-4b50-b39e-f5e5eeea7537
Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
